Subscribe to this blog

Follow by Email

Search This Blog

Gravity’s Engines – Caleb Scharf *****

Black holes are the rock stars of cosmology. With the possible exception of the Big Bang, nothing gets better press. And there has been plenty written about the guts of black holes – but in Gravity’s Engines, Caleb Scharf turns the picture on its head and explores the interaction of black holes with the environment around them.

The result is stunning. I can’t remember when I last read a popular science book where I learned as much I hadn’t come across before. In particular Scharf’s descriptions of the super-massive black holes in the centres of galaxies and how they influence the formation and structure of the galaxies is truly fascinating.

What’s more, this is no workmanlike bit of dull scientist droning, like some books by astronomers. Scharf can wax lyrical when taking us on a journey through space. I particularly loved the cosmic zoom fairly early on in the book, where he follows X-ray photons from a distant galaxy 12 billion light years away, very cleverly linking their flight to events on Earth (once it had formed around 4.5 billion years ago) that were happening at the same time.

The book is not without problems. Often the description is great, but sometimes it tips over into the flowery. It’s difficult not to lose interest a bit when Scharf goes into the details of his own work in a lengthy section. The attempt to show that black holes are somehow responsible for life on Earth stretches the credulity. And worst of all, Scharf never admits how much of what’s in the book is speculative, stating almost all of it as if it were unquestioned fact. So, for instance, dark matter is taken for granted with nary a mention of the competing MOND theory. I don’t think scientists (especially cosmologists) do themselves any favours when they pretend they deal in absolute facts.

This doesn’t detract though from the reality that this is the best cosmology book I’ve read all year, and a must for anyone with an interest in black holes. Recommended.

Hardback:

Kindle:

Review by Brian Clegg

Get link

Facebook

Twitter

Pinterest

Google+

Email

Other Apps

Labels

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ever since The War of the Worlds, the post-apocalyptic disaster novel has been a firm fixture in the Science Fiction universe. What's more, such books are often among the few SF titles that are shown any interest by the literati, probably because many future disaster novels feature very little science. With a few exceptions, though (I'm thinking, for instance, The Chrysalids) they can make for pretty miserable reading unless you enjoy a diet of page after page of literary agonising.

The Feed is a real mixture. Large chunks of it are exactly that - page after page of self-examining misery with an occasional bit of action thrown in. But, there are parts where the writing really comes alive and shows its quality. This happens when we get the references back to pre-disaster, when we discover the Feed, which takes The Circle's premise to a whole new level with a mega-connected society where all human interaction is through directly-wired connections… until the whole thing fails …

Science fiction has a long tradition of 'military in space' themes - and usually these books are uninspiring at best and verging on fascist at worst. From a serious SF viewpoint, it seemed that Joe Haldeman's magnificent The Forever War made the likes of Starship Troopers a mocked thing of the past, but sadly Hollywood seems to have rebooted the concept and we now see a lot of military SF on the shelves.

The bad news is that The Bastard Legion could not be classified as anything else - but the good news is that, just as Buffy the Vampire Slayer subverted the vampire genre, The Bastard Legion has so many twists on a straightforward 'marines in space' title that it does a brilliant job of subversion too.

The basic scenario is instantly different. Miska is heading up a mercenary legion, except they're all hardened criminals on a stolen prison ship, taking part because she has stolen the ship and fitted them all with explosive collars. Oh, and helping her train her &…

There's much to enjoy in Richard Carter's pean to the frugal yet visceral delights of being one with England's Pennine moorland. If this were all there were to the book it would have made a good nature read, but Carter cleverly weaves in science at every opportunity, whether it's inspired by direct observations of birds and animals and plants - I confess I was ignorant of the peregrine falcon's 200 mile per hour dive - or spinning off from a trig point onto the geometric methods of surveying through history all the way up to GPS.

Carter is something of an expert on Darwin, and inevitably the great man comes into the story many times - yet his appearance never seems forced. It's hard to spend your time in a natural environment like this and not have Darwin repeatedly brought to mind.

I confess to a distinct love of these moors. Having spent my first 11 years in and around Littleborough, just the other side of Blackstone Edge from Carter's moor, the moorland…

Menu

About our editor

Author of Science for Life,The Quantum Age, Final Frontier, Dice World, Gravity, The Universe Inside You, Build Your Own Time Machine, Inflight Science, A Brief History of Infinity, The God Effect and more, Brian spends most of his time these days writing popular science books and giving talks.